The Skivvies Leave It All on the Floor

It may have been sub-freezing temperatures in Manhattan earlier this week, but the Skivvies looked plenty comfortable as they stripped to down to their underwear on stage at the Highline Ballroom, launching into “Hot Hot Hot Up in Herre,” a clever mashup of Nelly’s “Hot in Herre,” Arrow’s “Hot Hot Hot” and Sondheim’s “It’s Hot Up Here” from “Sunday in the Park With George.” And they were just getting warmed up.

The Skivvies are the musical side project of Broadway types Lauren Molina (who recently starred in the revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “Marry Me a Little”) and Nick Cearley (the star of the one-man pop musical “And Then I Wrote a Song About It”). While they have been making music together since 2004, it wasn’t until they posted a clip performing a stripped down cover of Rihanna’s “We Found Love” — think lots of plastic instruments, xylophones and ukuleles — that they became YouTube sensations.

The fact that they quickly went from playing (fully clothed) in elementary schools to larger venues (the Cutting Room, Joe’s Pub and now Highline) after recording several videos in their designer underwear is not lost on either of them. Cearley first suggested the stripped-down look to match their stripped-down sound, but now it sets the tone for their quirky style.

After blending Cobra Starship’s “You Make Me Feel,” Kelis’ “Milkshake” and Cheap Trick’s “I Want You to Want Me” into “You Make Me Feel Like a Milkshake Needs Me,” they had a Lana Del Rey “Diet Mountain Dew” chaser, complete with shots of the high-speed soft drink.

The New York show featured several guest performances, and before coming back for an encore, the Skivvies showed the video (directed by the writer Augusten Borroughs) for their debut single, “Hardbody Hoedown,” a potty-mouth parody song that Molina says “gives the filthiest rap the prettiest twang.”

Afterwards, Cearley talked with Speakeasy about the genesis of the band:

What made you and Lauren start the Skivvies?

Lauren and I have been doing this since 2004. We met while getting our Equity Cards playing the grandest Elementary School cafetoriums throughout the country. We have always experimented with taking well-known songs to a different place to make them very different. Our brains both have a built in “That sounds like this,” or “Those words in Song A in that 1st verse sound really appropriate with those words in that bridge of song B…” We were cut from the same cloth. As far as the very first Skivvies situation: It was almost a year ago and we were planning to just hang out and play music, per usual. We went to the deli to get a sandwich, Rihanna’s “We Found Love” was on in that deli. To me, as that song was recorded, it was pure noise. But I was genuinely curious to know what those chords were she was singing over even though all you hear in the track is electronic-ness. So, we went back to Lauren’s, looked up what those actual chords would be if they were to be played on a guitar or ukulele(!), and thought it was such a pretty song. To me, it really takes on a different feel when you strip it to the bare essence of how it was written. Then we changed the time signature — made it a waltz — and coincidentally [are] still able to dance to it as originally intended by Rihanna. Maybe not the dance she had in mind when she recorded it, but dance nonetheless!

What has been the strangest experience of performing in your underwear?

The strangest for me has been when people think I am sexy or hot. No one has ever said those things to me ever before, really. I have always felt nerdy and dweeby. So whenever I get to play in my underwear, I feel like Clark Kent to Superman in a really weird way. And I feel like The Skivvies has even made me more confident in every other aspect of what I do. No choice is too bold at this point.

Any dream guests?

Well, we are dying to do something with Jake Shears of the Scissor Sisters and he has tweeted us with interest as well. And I have always enjoyed the quirk of Zooey Deschannel. If “Flight of the Conchords,” “Portlandia,” and “She & Him” ever created something with us, I could die pretty happy. Life was pretty complete when Paul Rudd called us on the phone and told us he was a fan. So if he ever wanted to join us onstage, I would also be on cloud 10 (one cloud past 9). All of our guests have been dreams. There’s a unique energy and bond that forms when you strip down everything both musically and literally. We are doing a show in L.A. in March and our good buddy Laura Benanti (Tony Award winner and star of NBC’s “Go On”) who was in our Cutting Room show has been really championing for us out there. Rumor has it, Andrew Rannells (also a dream!) wants to work with us. Love it when people want to get back to their singing roots and in their underwear!